National Gallery of Art and The Juilliard School Announce Upcoming Conference on Women in Art and Music in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries

Washington, DC, and New York, NY—The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art (the Center) and The Juilliard School (Juilliard) jointly announced today “Women in Art and Music: An Early Modern Global Conference.” The co-organized public conference will consist of presentations and performances that encourage attendees to think more broadly about women as creators, as part of the cultural and global economy, and as experts in their chosen fields of art in the early modern period (16th, 17th, and 18th centuries). This conference is the first collaboration between the museum and school. It is presented on the occasion of the National Gallery’s acquisition of a painting by Lavinia Fontana of Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni—a rare portrait of a 16th-century woman musician by a 16th-century woman artist.

“Women in Art and Music” consists of two parts: Part 1 will take place on October 18 at Juilliard in New York City and Part 2 will take place October 20–21 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

The conference is organized by Eve Straussman-Pflanzer (curator and head of the department of Italian and Spanish paintings at the National Gallery of Art) and Elizabeth Weinfield (musicologist and faculty member at Juilliard). For the first time, the museum and school bring together a scholar-curator and a scholar-performer to contemporaneously address ideas about gender in music and art during the early modern period. Eight thematic sessions across three days will unite more than 30 scholars from Columbia University, Handel Hendrix House, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tecnológico de Monterrey, University of Oxford, and University of Victoria, among other institutions across North America, Europe, and Australia. A live music program with students from Juilliard’s Historical Performance program and the early music ensemble Sonnambula will complement presentations at both venues, highlighting the importance of performance in the study of music and the arts.

“At the National Gallery, we’re excited to join forces with Juilliard and bring together internationally renowned experts in both early modern art and music to explore the women that have been understudied in our fields for so long,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art. “Art historical research is at the center of the National Gallery’s work and we are thrilled to take an inter-disciplinary approach in our studies. I am grateful to all participants in the project.”

“We greatly look forward to cohosting the ‘Women in Art and Music’ conference with the National Gallery of Art this fall,” said Adam Meyer, Juilliard’s provost. “This meaningful collaboration between our institutions brings together scholars and curators to examine the role of women as creators and leaders within their chosen fields of art. I would like to extend my gratitude to Elizabeth Weinfield for her leadership in organizing the conference on Juilliard’s behalf, and to the music history department for its support and contributions to the conference.”

In fall 2022, the Center and Juilliard invited scholars from across the humanities to submit papers, encouraging them to consider cross-cultural connections in how early modern women artists and/or musicians address issues of artmaking and performance in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and beyond.

This conference developed in relation to the National Gallery’s acquisition of a painting by early modern Italian artist Lavinia Fontana, which depicts 16th-century musician Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni. The painting celebrates the talents and intertwined stories of two creative women: its painter and her subject, a lute player and singer. This rare portrait will be on display outside the National Gallery’s East Building Auditorium for the duration of the conference.

Registration is free and open to the public. Participants may enroll for all three days in New York City and Washington, DC; register for a single day; or watch via live stream. The concerts are also free and open to the public. For more information and to register, please visit juilliard.edu or nga.gov.

https://www.nga.gov/press/2023/women-in-art-and-music.html  

October 18, 2023 | Juilliard